


The Foolishness of Beautiful Things

by ImmortalxSnow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Coffee Shops, College Student Eren Yeager, EMA feels, F/M, Hange does beautiful things with a protein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 05:37:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14763632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmortalxSnow/pseuds/ImmortalxSnow
Summary: Armin has never considered his job working the early morning shift at Sina's Café a particularly romantic affair, only an exhausting one. When Annie begins spending her mornings at the café, however, he starts to find relief in the prospect of pleasing her and maybe even understanding her mysterious character. [Coffee shop/modern/college AU, AruAnnie one-shot.]





	The Foolishness of Beautiful Things

_The Foolishness of Beautiful Things_

  
The worst part of Sina’s Café was the leaky roof. Mad dashes with buckets to save the creaky floors from rainwater dripping from the ceiling ruined the usual coziness for Armin. Before he’d taken this job, waking up in the middle of the night to raindrops pattering against his bedroom window brought a sleepy smile to his face and sent a shiver of contentment through his whole body. His blankets seemed warmer and his pillows softer on those nights, which were luxuriously quiet but for the rain.

  
Now the sound made him groan at the thought of the coming day. Guilt would needle him until he wound up walking to work earlier than usual to set up buckets in advance of his shift.

  
That morning, Armin tiptoed through the living room of his apartment as he got ready for work. His roommate Eren was snoring on the couch, his check pressed against a thick textbook. For days now he’d been seething about getting a lower score than his classmate Jean on their last physics exam. This time he was determined to earn the highest score in the class. Armin had been up past two helping him study, only going to bed after convincing his friend that a few hours of shut-eye would help more at that point than memorizing every table in chapter seven.

  
He was happy to have helped, but his head swam with exhaustion, which the rain only magnified. It lulled him like a siren as he leaned against the wall by the front door and pulled on his shoes. He longed to pause, if only for a moment. Just long enough to clear his mind and soothe his bloodshot eyes, to rest his body and prepare himself for a long day of lectures and labs.

  
No. Not now. Time for work.

  
Grasping his umbrella, Armin pushed open the door and stepped into the downpour. Sina’s was just around the corner from his street, across from the northeast edge of campus—a quiet area, separated from the vivacious heart of the small university and its raucous student union and the library nestled in the woods and the lecture halls filled with caffeine-fueled crammers late into the night. Here there was only the art gallery, directly across from the café, and on Armin’s side of the street, just the small complex where he lived with Eren and Mikasa. Even at the end of his shift, mid-morning when most everyone had already had a class or two, his commute was quiet.

  
The silence seemed luscious, teeming with tiny sounds: the rivulets of water gurgling in the gutter, the browning leaves in the willow trees brushing against each other in the wind, the rustle of Armin’s raincoat as his arms swung in time with his legs. He liked having moments of peace like these before work. However level-headed and mindful, Armin still left his shift some mornings unusually out of sorts. The first hour of his shift was slow. The second could be stressful. Seven to eight (and, to a lesser extent, eight to nine) was a block of time reserved for the undead, those students quivering with dread and running on adrenaline from all-nighters before that big orgo test or the first round of French comprehensives or some big postmodern history presentation. Armin knew each of these exhausted zombies, every class with upcoming coursework and gauntlets, and wished everyone the best of luck or offered hints from experience whenever possible.

  
Still, he eventually had to admit the stress could rub off on him. He missed the mid-afternoon. The previous two years, he’d worked that shift, when Sina’s was quiet, with only those few students who would find some cozy table where they’d get a head start on homework or chat with friends. He’d had to give up that shift when he’d begun his junior year and discovered advanced science labs were held exclusively in the afternoon. The only barista willing to switch shifts was Marco, who was desperate for more sleep. So now Armin opened at six a.m. and served the rest-averse and stressed.

  
The first object of the day was to attend to the leaks. In the back of the café, beside the refrigerator half full of milk and cream, he found several white buckets, some cracked at the rim. He placed them as needed beside the plump light-blue sofa by the window. Two near the door, one out of the way and one right where someone might kick it over by accident. The last went behind the counter.

  
That finished, Armin unwrapped the day’s quota of pastries—blueberry muffins topped with raw sugar, cherry Danishes with crumbled white frosting, flaky chocolate croissants, chocolate-chip banana bread, maple walnut scones—and set them in the display case next to the espresso machine. Then, he made himself a cappuccino, munched on a scone, and waited for the morning to unfold.

  
He’d resorted to highlighting parts of his biochemistry textbook to keep himself awake when his first customer came in.

  
“You’re a little later than usual.”

  
Armin smiled and started the 20 oz. extra-shot-extra-sugars-no-room-for-cream Americano before Hange had finished bouncing up to the counter.

  
“I wasn’t going to come, but Erwin made me leave the lab. Said he needed it for undergrad stuff.” She sighed. “I was doing beautiful things with that protein, Armin, beautiful things! And Erwin had to interrupt my research for undergrads.”

  
While she gulped down her coffee, hardly pausing for it to cool, her graduate assistant Moblit wandered in, haggard as ever, and ordered a double-shot to go with his whiskey.

  
Then Jean came in, and Armin wished him luck on that morning’s fateful exam. By the time he left, shortly after Hange had dragged Moblit off to stake out the lab, it was just past seven. The calm before the morning rush fell hard. Now Armin couldn’t much keep himself awake, and he nodded off after a few moments.

  
When he opened his eyes she was standing there, arms folded, face expressionless.

  
Armin knew Annie Leonhart, which is to say he knew of her, had a sense of her character. Brilliant, yet lazy. No. That wasn’t the right word. Far from it. Not lackadaisical, or phlegmatic. Disinterested, that was it. Gifted and deliberately disengaged, as if she knew something he did not. Above all, not someone he had imagined entering Sina’s, much less ordering a drink.

  
He said, “Oh,” and then, “I didn’t catch that.”

  
“Decaf.” She was looking a little to his left, subtly ignoring his gaze. “Whatever’s the smallest size you have.”

  
“Sure.”

  
But here she was, brandishing two dollar bills and telling him to keep the change. A name sitting with crossed arms and bored eyes on the couch, staring straight ahead, neither watching him prepare her drink nor gazing out the window with a faint, almost artificial air of wistfulness.

  
Armin brought her the cup of coffee with a saucer and folded black napkin, instead of waiting for her to return to the counter.

 

“I forgot to ask,” he said, the words sounding so silly and irrelevant, “but did you want anything? I mean, you know, room for cream? Or sugar?”

  
“It’s fine.” She pushed up the baggy sleeves of her gray hoodie and picked up the cup.

  
Armin nodded. He wanted to say something like, “I hope you like your coffee,” or “Can I get you something else?” or even “Will you come back tomorrow morning?” but he did not.

  
She remained there on the couch, left leg crossed over right, throughout the seven a.m. rush as Sina’s came to life with anxious chatter, the crunch of sugary pastries, the gurgling of espresso shots being pulled from the old machine, and the constant dripping rainwater into the buckets.

  
Armin’s heart lifted from its slow spiral into his stomach when Eren and Mikasa approached the counter.

  
“When did you finally fall asleep?” he asked Eren over the noise of the espresso machine.

  
“I dunno, whenever you left,” said Eren. You?”

  
“I guess I was awake for a while after.”

“Doing what? ’S not like you had work of your own to do, right?”

  
“No. No, I didn’t. I guess I couldn’t sleep. I was lying awake listening to the rain.”

  
Armin drizzled chocolate sauce over the top of Eren’s mocha in lazy figure-eights. Then he flicked a sugar packet back and forth in one hand, trying to shake up the loose crystals.

  
“You look exhausted,” Mikasa added, the steam from her cup of Assam tea curling around her sharp cheekbones and dark eyes.

  
“Yeah, you okay?” asked Eren.

  
Armin nodded and said, “Thanks, guys, but I’m just tired. I’ll catch up on sleep tonight. Good luck on the test, Eren.”

  
And with that, he turned to the line curving around the buckets toward the door.

* * *

 

She was still there at the end of Armin’s shift. Something about his sleepiness framed her with a fantastical quality, making her feel all the more unfamiliar. On the table her coffee sat cold and barely touched. Armin asked if he could get it out of her way.

  
“It’s fine,” she said in his general direction. “I’ll clear it when I’m done.”

  
“Can I at least heat it up for you?”

  
Armin couldn’t tell if Annie replied “It’s fine,” or “That’s fine,” and so he decided to leave her be.

  
Once Ymir arrived to take over, he packed up his textbooks, hurried to class, and focused on protein structures for the rest of the day.

* * *

 

When he arrived home that evening following biochem lab, he sank into the sofa and closed his eyes. Mikasa was stirring jasmine rice on the temperamental gas stove that smoked whenever Eren tried to cook but purred under her fingers. Here Armin felt safe, at home, and yet unable to give in and sleep.

  
After a few moments of tossing and turning, the tired springs squeaking beneath his discomfited body, he rolled onto his stomach to face Mikasa and asked, “Do you need any help? Can I set the table or something?”

  
Armin knew she would say no, but he still felt compelled to offer some assistance all the same.

  
“Dinner will be ready soon. You should rest in the meantime.”

  
_I’ve been trying, but I can’t_ —this was what Armin longed to say. Yet he did not want to complain or, much less, to worry her. He said instead, “Okay, I will. Thanks, Mikasa.”

  
That night, Armin fell asleep at a reasonable hour (just after midnight) only to awake every other hour.

* * *

 

Annie returned the next morning. At first, Armin attributed her appearance to a mere fluke, or, perhaps, a quirk of the weather. Rainy days had their own logic, interpreted only with their own grammar. On a damp morning, the melancholic and magical alike could come together into shimmering relief, even in Sina’s. Armin thought the leaky roof might be incantation enough.

  
When the sun came out on Wednesday morning, she was there at seven.

  
“I’m sorry,” Armin said when she strode up to the counter. “I forgot to make the drip coffee this morning. I just realized. I’m so sorry. But don’t—I mean, I can make some if you don’t mind the wait. You know, though, the espresso tastes better. And it’ll be hot. No wait.”

  
“Are you just trying to make me spend more money? That’s not very honest of you.”

  
“Whatever you want’ll be on the house. It’s my fault anyway.”

  
It was true that it was his fault, though this was not the only reason he didn’t hesitate to pay for her drink out of his own pocket.

  
“Make me what you think is best, then.”

  
Annie took her seat at the window, her sneakers scuffing the tired tile floor, now shining in the morning sunlight. Her long fingers brushed the tips of stir sticks peering out of the jar on the table. A few sugar crystals, lingering on the granite where Connie must have forgotten to clean last night, sparkled sticky and playful though so quotidian.

  
Had he always been such a romantic? He forgot such parts of himself at times. And which drink to make? Making the right one, the right one for her, required some basic understanding of who she was, and that itself required him to interpret this new knowledge, to judge it. He just wanted to please her, same as he wanted to please everyone else, and yet so different.

  
In the end, he made her his favorite drink—a cappuccino made with hazelnut grounds and topped with a sprinkle of cinnamon—if only because it was what he could make best. He told her as much when he brought the cup and saucer over to her, a small spoon clinking against the white rim of the plate.

  
She said, “Is that so,” and took a sip.

  
Armin turned back to the counter, where Hange and Moblit were waiting, and was taking a step in their direction when she hummed. Almost with approval, he thought.

  
“I’m glad you like it.”

  
He smiled, heart hammering. Then it was back to work.

* * *

 

That was one part of his morning routine made both simpler and more complex, so quickly and unexpectedly. Annie came by Sina’s most mornings, at the same time, and took the same spot on the couch beside the window. Armin brought her the special spiced cappuccino, sometimes accepting her money and sometimes not. She would remain there, sipping her coffee long after it had gone cold, for the remainder for his shift. He didn’t know when she left, exactly, nor where she went, though he was always expecting to run into her on campus. Not because she was a staple presence there (hardly), but because chance encounters were just the kind of thing that happened, especially once such mysterious, romantic seeds as her uncharacteristic café visits had been sown.

  
Once they ran out of cinnamon. Armin sighed when his search through the cupboard beneath the counter turned up nothing. A bit protective of his money (at least when it came to the café), the owner Rod rarely stocked the shelves with extras of anything beyond the essential milk and coffee beans (and even those were gone some mornings when Armin opened).

  
After staring at his phone (and letting himself get distracted by Eren’s texts from yesterday about how he’d destroyed Jean on the exam in the end), he called Rod and said they were out of cinnamon and could he please get more. Rod responded that no one used the cinnamon, anyway, and it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  
“There is one girl who does,” Armin said. “One customer who does, and sir, she is—her business is worth buying more cinnamon.”

  
With a grumble and a noncommittal response, Rod hung up. Perhaps the spice cupboard would be replenished in the next two weeks, if at all. At least the missing cinnamon was a conversation starter.

  
“Sorry about that,” Armin said, placing the plain cappuccino on Annie’s table. “We’re running low on hazelnut grounds, too.”

  
“I see.”

  
When he’d thought of the missing cinnamon as something to talk about, Armin hadn’t actually expected Annie to respond. Now he groped for words.

  
“Yeah, the owner of this place—well, he isn’t the best at paying attention to inventory. I’ve come in some mornings to find we’re so low on really important things, like milk, that I have to go to the store myself.”

  
“That doesn’t sound like a problem with the owner. It sounds like no one who works here communicates well.”

  
Armin paused, surprised at the challenge simmering in her words (and so many more words than he’d expected her to spare for him).

  
“No. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but I think we’re all so preoccupied at work, especially those who have the late shifts. They’re tired and trying to finish whatever’s due tomorrow.”

  
Annie hummed.

  
“And you—“—Armin felt his heart thrum dizzily between his ribs—“—it’s obvious what you’re preoccupied with.”

  
Blood flared through his face but cooled when she added, “It’s a waste trying to be kind to everyone.”

  
She turned her attention to her coffee, and Armin did not dare to say any more.

  
He maintained the silence between them until she broke it a few days later. Armin had grown tired of waiting for Rod and bought more cinnamon himself.

  
“You paid for this with your own money, didn’t you?”

  
Armin cast his gaze downward and began scratching the back of his neck.

  
“It’s only three dollars at the store.”

  
“Three dollars is awfully inexpensive.”

  
“It might have been closer to four.”

  
Annie shook her head.

  
“So you’ll lie to me under the pretense of sparing me the pain of causing you trouble?” Her face was unreadable, her tone flat.

  
“You’re not the only person who uses the cinnamon. I do, too. Though I think it’s just the two of us who like it. But I could have waited, I mean. Gone with plain coffee. For a bit.”

  
Annie said, “For a moment I thought you maybe weren’t as altruistic as you’d like to be.” Then, softly, “You are a fool, Armin.”

* * *

 

Their conversations continued with the weeks as fall neared its fade into winter. Annie grew sad, her voice quiet, her gaze more distant, her scant movements even fewer. Just as she refused to acknowledge her deepening sorrow, so did Armin choose not to pry. When he brought her coffee, which she often left untouched, or stole a moment with her to watch the autumn rains, he talked about whatever he thought would be most neutral, least likely to upset while remaining interesting.

  
He told her about the books he’d kept from his required philosophy classes, the ones he’d dog-eared and highlighted in searing yellow and soft aquamarine. He told her about seeing Hange chase small lizards that had gotten into the science building, how she shrieked with gleeful horror when the creatures fled into Erwin’s lab. He told her about Levi, his former organic chemistry TA who deducted assignments by at least a letter grade if students failed to clean their lab stations to his standards. He did not tell her that he awoke on weekday mornings with a sharp fear in his limbs and a dryness in his mouth.

  
Sometimes Armin wanted to ask why she still came to Sina’s, why she listened to his chatter and even spoke back to him on occasion, but the question’s weight seemed to break an unspoken rule.

Armin wasn’t the only one who felt some kind of stage had been set. On one of the random evenings he stopped by the café for a quick pick-me-up espresso con panna and slice of zucchini-carrot bread, he overhead Annie’s roommates, gathered at two adjacent tables by the counter, chatting about her new morning ritual.

  
“It’s amazing she gets up at all,” Hitch said, toying with the straw in her iced caramel macchiato, “let alone come to a place like this. And so early in the morning.”

  
“I didn’t even think she liked coffee,” Krista said. Ymir added something Armin couldn’t make out.

  
“Maybe it’s the food,” said Sasha. At least, Armin thought that’s what she’d said; she was speaking with her mouth full.

  
Hitch concluded the conversation by saying that whatever was up, it must be boring, knowing Annie.

  
“Can I help you?”

  
Hitch was staring at Armin, one eyebrow raised. He snatched up his coffee.

  
“I was just leaving.”

  
He hoped the heat prickling up his collar hadn’t yet broken out into color.

  
Hitch snickered; then, raising her voice, she said, “I wonder if it has anything to do with that Armin boy. He is the one who works here in the mornings, isn’t he?”

  
Eventually, Eren and Mikasa said something, too, though not at home. They had better things to focus on than gossip, namely, Eren’s homework. It was only at Sina’s, with Annie in her place by the window and Armin glancing over at her every so often, that they expressed their curiosity.

  
“I wonder if everything’s okay,” Eren said. He looked over his shoulder and leaned into the counter. “She’s been coming often, huh?”

  
Armin nodded.

  
“Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her with Reiner and Bertholt recently. Whenever they’re on campus, she’s not with them. Not even off to the side way back like usual.”

  
Mikasa frowned and said, “I don’t trust them. Or her. It’s better if they’re apart.”

  
Armin smiled. He treasured even their quotidian bickering, almost the way he treasured the sight of Annie there, in the café.

  
“You seem happier than usual today,” Eren finally said.

  
“I hadn’t realized I seemed unhappy.”

  
“You’ve looked so tired.”

  
“You can’t be sleeping enough,” said Mikasa. “I hear you walking down the hall in the middle of the night.”

  
“Have I been waking you up? I’m sorry. I can be quieter—”

  
“That’s not the point, Armin,” said Eren. “Mikasa’s just fine on little sleep. And besides, it’s not like you have to apologize.”

  
“That’s right.” Mikasa laid her hand over Armin’s. The rising sunlight caught the edges of her scarf, highlighting the fabric’s gentle wrinkles and giving it a shimmer that contrasted with its many drab patches. “We’re concerned, that’s all.”

  
A line of stressed students stretching to the door was beginning to form. Armin sighed. He didn’t want them growing more agitated.

  
“I’m really okay,” he said. “But we can talk about it later. You guys need to get to class, right?”

  
Eren frowned, and Mikasa’s eyes were sad, but they agreed and quickly left the café.

  
In the corner, Annie’s hair glowed with all the warmth of a well-lit window on a lonely winter night. Her beauty, now as always, was radiant and exhausted, like the dying core of a star gone supernova. Just waiting there, in the emptiness, for entropy to move forward on its metalled ways, to chiaroscuro and then consume her light.

  
He felt sure all he would ever have of her was a shadow.

  
Would that be enough?

* * *

 

She was waiting outside in the rain when he got to work the next morning. Her hoodie was speckled with raindrops and water dripping off the loose ends of her usual bun. Her chin was lifted, her feet pressed together, and her eyes closed.

  
The few birds hiding in the willow trees sighed their long low whistles as Armin ran toward her, umbrella extended. His sneakers splashed water across the concrete, and he shivered at the cold seeping into his socks. She was there, in the chill, as if she didn’t feel any of it. Only when he saw her eyes did he begin to think she did feel every droplet streaking and slithering down her scalp through her soft hair onto her sculpted face.

  
“Annie.”

  
Armin didn’t ask what, or how long, or even why. He simply held his umbrella over her head and unlocked the front door to let her inside. Rain dripped from the ceiling like an erratic pulse. He gestured to her to wait while he arranged the buckets.

  
Once he finished setting up, he said, “Let me make you something. To warm up.”

  
Though Annie stood still, her gaze flickered in time with each of his staccato movements as he pulled open the refrigerator and then drew back.

  
“We’re out of milk.”

  
Armin pressed his forehead to the cold metal and sighed. Annie was here, cold and wet and he could only wonder what else, and he had just wanted to comfort her somehow, the only way he knew how, and he couldn’t even manage that.

  
He turned to her, and out of all the things he wanted to say, he chose the simplest: “I need to go get milk.” Then, faster, “Please, come with me. I’ll—I’ll borrow Eren’s car so we don’t have to walk. Just wait here, okay?”

  
Armin hurried down the street to his apartment, unsure if Annie would in fact remain at the café. When he returned, however, she was still standing inside. He stretched across the passenger seat to open the car door for her.

  
“Aren’t you going to put your seatbelt on?” he asked, pushing the gearshift into drive.

  
“Last time I checked—”—her voice was lower than usual, too low—“—the store wasn’t even five minutes down the road.”

  
Armin pretended he was laughing at himself for them both.

* * *

 

“You paid for all that yourself, didn’t you,” she said after Armin had finished placing all five gallons of milk in the backseat.

  
“We were completely out, Annie.” Just saying her name, the tightness of the syllables strange in his mouth, made her feel closer. “We—I had to get more.”

  
She said nothing but leaned her head against the window, tracing a crack in the windshield with her fingertips.

  
Armin hesitated to call what he felt _desire_ ; the word fell flat under the weight of its crudeness. Yet the sensation all through his body that something was trying to burst through his skin and turn him inside out was a kind of longing. He did not know how to romance someone, only how to please, and he wished he had learned to slow his frantic pace long enough for languid intimacy to take over the rhythm of his daily life. To teach him to savor, not merely anticipate, to hold and not just anatomize mystery.

  
“Something happened.” Sina’s was coming up on their left, but Armin didn’t slow down. “This morning, I mean, with you…”

  
He kept waiting for a red light so he could turn and gaze at her, the constancy of her resolute face and the unchanging rise and fall of her chest. Soon he would have to turn around to avoid the highway just off campus. Soon he would have to return to the café, rush to prepare for the morning. Soon Eren might need his car.

  
“What I mean is, whatever’s wrong, it doesn’t have to be that way, and even if it does—well, I can help. I will help.”

  
He chanced a glance at her before turning back toward Sina’s, but her expression hadn’t changed. When he pulled into the café parking lot, it was the same but for the gathering tears in her eyes.

  
“You are a fool, Armin.” She leaned over and pushed his hair away from his face, behind his ear. “But you are a relief.”

  
The longing sang like a trilling wire in his blood.

  
Bewildered by the flurry of happy and sad chords she’d played in him, Armin took a moment to get out of the car and call after her as she began to walk away from the café.

  
“Will you come in with me?”

She just looked over her shoulder, half-smiled, and shook her head.

* * *

 

The next morning, she was gone. No one knew what had happened to her nor where she’d gone. A few of Armin’s friends asked him if he knew anything, but he said no.

  
He told Eren and Mikasa about their talk in the car, the memory of her fingers against his cheekbone, touching his hair. Then he said he was tired, and his job was burning him out.

  
“No,” he said, pausing to think. Eren was sitting on one side of the couch, Mikasa on the other. Here they were, familiar people in familiar positions shoulder to shoulder, and he relaxed into their warmth. “It’s not just work, or school, or anything like that. Or even Annie. It’s just people.”

  
And then he told them it wasn’t so much other people as it was him, and he needed a break from making everyone so happy. When they each wrapped an arm around his shoulders, he closed his eyes. The longing singing beneath his skin dissolved sweetly into his blood and pulsed with each slow, satisfied heartbeat.

* * *

 

Armin could have quit his job, but the truth was, he needed the money. He could have kept the morning shift, but his friends were worried, and some burdens just couldn’t be carried, and he was so weary of trying. He began to work in the evenings instead.

  
And on those rainy mornings, when he awoke early, he pulled his blankets tighter around his shoulders and went back to sleep. Sometimes he briefly thought of Annie, but the bright flash of memory melted away as he fell into dreams. He did not expect her to return.


End file.
